Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Ginsberg Does Indian Mantras on Sloow Tapes

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Speaking of Allen Ginsberg, I’m told a new Sloow Tapes cassette entitled “London Mantra” is about to be released. Bart de Paepe, producer of the indie label, writes, “It’s a recording George Dowden made at his home in July 1973.” The tape features “Ginsberg solo on his harmonium, singing Indian mantras and a few of […]

Amiri Baraka Has Died, a Remembrance

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Amiri Baraka’s obituary in the NY Times this morning mentioned his first contact with Allen Ginsberg. …to whom, in the puckish spirit of the times, he had written a letter on toilet paper reading, “Are you for real?” (“I’m for real, but I’m tired of being Allen Ginsberg,” came the reply, on what, its recipient […]

How a Brilliant Writer Got in His Own Way

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I’m told Ben Hecht was recently inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. That could be why I was asked to write a piece about him for a special “Chicago Issue” of the Chicago Quarterly Review, but something tells me it was pure coincidence. I also have a feeling the Hall of Fame won’t […]

In NYC: Catching Up With Peter Schumann
and the Bread and Puppet Theater

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Peter Schumann: The Shatterer is the first solo museum exhibition of Bread and Puppet Theater founder and director Peter Schumann. The exhibition opened in November 2013 as part of the first season in the museum’s newly expanded galleries. It marks the 50th anniversary of the theater company and introduces New York audiences to a largely […]

A Great One Died Today

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Click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click again. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Paris Bookfair Focuses on New Practices in Art

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14 Rue Bonaparte, from Nov. 14 to 17. Open to the general public. Free admission. Postscript: Nov. 23 — The bookfair was jammed. Very impressive. The lecture hall was a19th-century amphitheater in back of the main hall. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’

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2002: “Naqoyqatsi,” meaning “life as war,” was the third in Reggio’s qatsi trilogy. 1988: “Powaqqatsi,” meaning “life in transformation,” was the second. 1982: “Koyaanisqatsi,” meaning “life out of balance,” was the first. Reggio’s latest, “Visitors,” with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

He Had a Dream, But His Speech Was Hardly Noticed

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Given all the self-congratulation of the 50th anniversary celebration marking the historic significance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, you’d think its importance had been noted at the time, especially by the news media. Well, Jess Bravin has news for you. The day before King gave the speech on the steps […]

Free Lynne Stewart: Save Her Life

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UPDATES BELOW … Back in 2005, when Lynne Stewart was prosecuted for aiding terrorists in her role as a civil rights defense attorney representing Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up the United Nations building in New York, it was clear the feds were aiming to fry her. […]

From a Townhouse to the Vasty Deep

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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? Glendower: Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the Devil Hotspur: And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the Devil By telling the truth. […]

Queen of the Arms Trade

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“Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is one of the world’s richest women, worth £17 billion. Her investments in the arms trade include firms that produce the uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells. The deployment of these shells by the US military in its attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 is believed to […]

Back-to-Back Writings From Underground Dos-à-Dos

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+++ Incidental Intelligence: Anyone who cherishes raw truth, and especially those of us who were warmed by Carl Weissner’s friendship, will appreciate EINE ANDERE LIGA as a mammoth achievement. But Milena Verlag ought to correct two claims on its Web site: 1) that this posthumous collection of his underground writings has a foreword written by […]

‘It’s a Boy!’

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Someone asked what I thought about the royal birth in Britain. Nima Shirazi said it for me. And let’s not forget this: +++ Or the latest addition to the Royal Babylon video archive on YouTube: Inheritance. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Connecting Kim Dotcom and Edward Snowden

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To have a staff of thousands that keeps me informed is one of the privileges of this blog. Had I not been tipped about the projection of Kim Dotcom’s face with the words “United Stasi of America” on a wall of the U.S. embassy in Berlin, I would not have made a connection between N.S.A. […]

More Than Just Opinion, Osborne Has Information

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Bill Osborne’s comment about Edward Snowden’s amazing interview says what needed to be said: The abuse of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning was designed to intimidate whistle blowers like Edward Snowden. It is good to see that at least in this case it has not worked. We should soon expect a campaign of character assassination […]

Transgressive Otto Muehl Set Radical Template

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Just in time for the Acker Awards, newly established to recognize noncomformity in the arts, obituaries for Otto Muehl have popped up in the news as if on cue. Muehl was a 1960s Vienna Actionist (along with Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler) whose “radical performance art,” as Margalit Fox put it in The […]

Assange: It’s U.S. Security State vs. First Amendment

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In a 40-minute Web & television interview on Democracy Now! WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange discussed U.S. Justice Department spying on journalists and what the “abuse of the Espionage Act” against a reporter means. He also talked about the future of WikiLeaks, the financial blockade against it, and his nearly year-long political asylum in the Ecuadorean […]

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